


FAGB Supplementals

by Ventadour



Series: From A Gentler Beginning [3]
Category: Vampire Knight (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Supplement To Existing Work
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:15:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 8,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27499270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ventadour/pseuds/Ventadour
Summary: This is a supplemental work for my "From A Gentler Beginning" series, where I'll be putting setting documents for my take on Hino Matsuri'sVampire Knight. The chapter count is unfixed, and I have no specific roadmap for it.This is as much for my own personal future reference as for general consumption. It is not intended to be consumed in isolation.
Series: From A Gentler Beginning [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1998787
Kudos: 3





	1. Council of Elders: Overview

The Council of Elders was founded a little over three thousand years ago by Yuto Kuran, who was weary of the weight of rule resting chiefly upon his family. He did not wish for his sons or daughter to endure the intrigues or difficulties that he did, and as such took measures to erect a government that would rule in his place. Although this sounds as if it would be simple, the process of ensuring that it would last beyond his lifetime was more complex than was ever officially recorded.

In accordance with the King's decree, the structure of the Council of Elders was to be as follows:

Each of the surviving Pureblood lineages would have a seat upon the Council, and these families could designate any single member of their family (pureblood or lesser descendant) to officially fill their seat and vote on their behalf. These seats would go on to be near uniformly occupied by the eldest member of the lineage awake at any given time, though deviations did occur now and again.

Each cadet branch of a Pureblood lineage is entitled to a seat and a vote conditional on having made major contributions to the world. Which is to say that a do-nothing Aristocrat could not generally claim a seat of their own absent any merit, but industrialists and accomplished professionals could. This condition need only be met once; an Aristocratic lineage, once established, would never lose its seat.

Then and now, Pureblood participation within the Council of Elders has been low. Part of this has to do with their tendency to hibernate for generations, and part of it has to do with the fact that they can generally count on their Aristocratic descendants to act in their best interests anyway. When one has a practically divine being in their back pocket, they usually prefer to keep it happy after all.

The Aristocrats have been dominant since shortly after the abdication of Yuto Kuran. Although less individually powerful than any Pureblood, longevity combined with the urgency of mortality -- even if distant -- makes them excellent at both long and short-term thinking. When examining the make-up of the Council at any given time, it is usually easy to observe the power blocs that the Aristocrats have managed to carve out through strategic alliances with commoners.

Finally, the King allocated a variable number of seats to commoners. For each Aristocratic lineage that earned or was given a seat, common vampires (and, although few like to admit it, formerly human vampires) are permitted to elect by popular vote a single voting member to serve as their representatives.

As it has long been tradition for the Kuran to leave their seat vacant even while awake, Purebloods have always had -- quite deliberately -- ever so slightly less official power than both Aristocratic and Commoner power blocs. One major 'favor' that Purebloods have traded since the beginning of the council, however, is simply the act of going away. In exchange for major concessions -- now, or later -- a Pureblood might leave their family's seat vacant for centuries, sleeping through times that they do not agree with in the hopes of waking to a more favorable situation.

The power of commoners and formerly human vampires is linked inextricably to their ties to Aristocrats, or very occasionally, Purebloods. The balance of the Council membership is arranged so that it is not possible for any one bloc to unilaterally make massive decisions for the whole, forcing coalitions and cooperation between powers and classes that might otherwise have nothing to do with one another.

Two special seats exist: The seat of the Kuran Family, and the seat of the Head of the Council. Although the manner in which they would be filled was different, each seat held the power of determining the outcome of tied votes, and a veto. In the event of a conflict between the Kuran and Head seat, the Kuran seat takes priority.

The Head of the Council is determined by internal votes within power blocs to put forward a representative, followed by a collective vote by the Council. Either the Kuran seat or the Head of the Council MUST be filled; if no one sits in either, the Council has 1095 days to appoint their new leader, after which the entire seated Council must either cast votes or be recalled and forbidden from holding a seat for the next century.

Despite the fact that Yuto gave his family the power to effectively re-assume his throne, neither he nor his children ever assumed the seat. But the possibility that they might often curbed or moderated the impulses of the Council's deliberations, and most now assume that this was the effect the King intended.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "1095 Days?!" You ask, shocked. But remember that even a Level D Vampire that feeds regularly from a Pureblood has a completely uncertain lifespan, and even Aristocrats only look at the outer edge of elderly at a thousand. This is considered a very short period of time to act by all but the youngest vampires. The burden of a 90 day turnaround time would be considered shockingly unreasonable. If you're thinking, 'That must be a cause of friction with the Hunter's Association', you're right.


	2. Council of Elders: Law

The core abridged policies established by the Council of Elders are roughly as follows:

**On the topic of mind control...**

Pureblooded senators are not permitted to wield their powers of authority in order to influence senate votes. Because this rule is extremely difficult to enforce, it is practically useless, but it is technically possible for a Pureblood to fall under censure as a result of this. Most simply observe that the prohibition is constrained to votes-in-progress, and that there is no prohibition against influencing a vote in advance. Attempts to amend or repeal this law have consistently failed.

Because the usage of mind-altering powers is vital in securing the secrecy and thus control of vampire society, they have very few taboos or laws surrounding violations of the mind.

**On the topic of murder...**

The Council of Elders does not regard the killings of individual humans to be murder. Although a select population of vampires that were formerly human have made valiant efforts to change this, even among their peers it is an unpopular notion. In general, there is no mechanism by which to punish a vampire ONLY for the act of killing a human being. Punishments do exist for an excess of indiscretion -- usually of the kind that draw the attention of the Hunter's Association -- but most vampires understand that sooner or later they're going to lose control and kill somebody by accident. Consequently, it takes two or three very obvious murders close together before the Council will consider disciplinary action, and even then they treat it more like animal cruelty than murder.

The killing of vampires is treated more-or-less the same as humans treat the killing of humans, although the chances of something officially happening have even more to do with who you are and who you know. Money talks, but psychic demigods talk louder.

Without a formal declaration of war or some breach of law on their part, Hunters are -- on paper at least -- treated identically to vampires. Precisely how much a given situation deviates from the norm depends on how hated the Hunter was and what the circumstances of their death was. This treatment is reciprocal and based on treaties established long ago, so it's not an arrangement that the Council wants to burn bridges on unless it knows its position is well beyond secure.

Humans in service to other vampires are broadly considered the property of that vampire. Killing such a human is expected to be repaid in the form of a weregild, the actual substance of which depends on the relative stations of the two. The greater the disparity in station, the less the lower aggrieved party will receive.

Formerly human vampires are, grudgingly and with great reluctance, considered vampires for all legal purposes except one. The Pureblood who created the vampire has a responsibility to stop them from falling to Level E, but otherwise has discretion on what to do with them, which includes casually murdering them if they please. Anyone else is murdering a fellow vampire, which has penalties ranging from imprisonment to death. Killing the favored pet of a Pureblood usually results in death, even if the circumstances were understandable on the part of the offender. A dead innocent here or there is simply preferable to provoking demigods to colossally dangerous hissy fits.

Allowing a formerly human vampire to fall to Level E is punishable by death, as is turning a human unwillingly. This highly unpopular policy was brought about by the only formerly human Head of the Council, who chaired the senate fifteen hundred years ago and managed to unite the lower classes with moderate Aristocrats. It was believed that this law would be inevitably overturned, but when the Aristocrats took back control of the Senate it abruptly became a tradition for the Head of the Council to veto the repeal of the law on behalf of the lower classes.

Secretly, the Aristocrats collectively agreed that this was an excellent method to cleanly dispose of troublesome Purebloods. The traditional veto is to keep that avenue intact, disguised as goodwill.

The murder of a Pureblood outside of the specific circumstances provided for by Council law is practically unconditionally cause for unceremonious execution. Even in those circumstances, they don't want an outsider to carry out the execution.

**Lesser violence...**

Vampires hold grudges, but they don't have laws for damage dealt less than murder. They're a territorial, aggressive type of life and they recognize that sometimes they're just going to tear each other's arms off. Since even lower class vampires can survive limb removal, they mostly just don't bother to formally prosecute violence with a consequence less serious than death.

Of course, offenses against Purebloods tend to get a powerfully visceral reaction, even though most of the world is completely nonthreatening to them. The Senate usually just allows the grudges resulted from such an infraction take care of the problem for them.


	3. Bonded Weapons: Basics

"Bonded Weapon" refers to a type of armament created from metal that has been imbued with fragments of a Pureblood vampire's essence.

The matter that composes a Pureblood's body is highly flexible, beginning with a fixed form that gradually becomes 'unstuck' as they grow, ultimately becoming corporeally 'unhinged' by the time that their fangs come in. It might be easier to imagine a Pureblood as a soul that generates a body for itself rather than a truly corporeal being. It should be noted that this is a simplification, and a Pureblood existing as a free floating "ghost" consciousness has never occurred.

This property allowed the Furnace Ancestor to dislocate her being from her body and associate it with the metal that her furnace produces. This metal receives a sort of "seed" of the Ancestor, which confers upon it the potential to develop unique powers and traits that are comparable to that of a Pureblood or Aristocrat Vampire. It also retains a certain amount of the Ancestor's consciousness, though more in the way of 'preprogrammed responses' than actual thought.

The most basic function of a Bonded Weapon, of course, is simply to allow a Hunter the ability to kill a vampire more easily, or to kill a Pureblood at all. How a bonded weapon accomplishes this requires considering how a Pureblood accomplishes the same.

A Pureblood's substance is able to connect the state of another Pureblood to the state of their body, causing them to need the continued function of their body as-it-is to survive. This is a temporary state, lasting a variable amount of time (or not at all in the case of Stage Noll bonded weapons) based on the strength of the weapon that injured them, but while this state lasts they're only modestly more tough than any other vampire. Barring being in such a corporeal lock state, even total physical obliteration is a trivial if hunger-inducing injury for a Pureblood.

Aristocratic, Common, and formerly human vampires are already bound to corporeal form and require certain minimum biological functions to live. However, their ability to regenerate is still rooted in a diminished version of the Pureblood ability to simply "make a body", and anything shy of an instantly fatal wound can usually be recovered from if the vampire in question is unscrupulous enough.

Bonded weapons have the same effect as a Pureblood who is acting to kill; a Pureblood so affected is fixed in form, and lesser vampires suffer grievous wounds at the point of contact and cease to regenerate from wounds that were previously suffered.

**Stages**

The Stage of a Bonded Weapon is shorthand for how much development it has undergone, and its relative threat level.

 _Stage Noll_ is the designated stage for newly forged bonded weapons. They have no special properties apart from fixing the forms of Purebloods, repelling attempts by vampires to use them, and shutting down the regeneration of vampires in general.

 _Stage Ett_ is the designated stage for either inherited weapons that once bore a much higher stage, or moderately experienced new weapons. At this stage the weapon's usage is blatantly supernatural in some way; a blade might be able to cut through stone, a gun does not require ammo, etc.

Note: Unless in the hands of a particularly weak hunter or a human, a bonded weapon that reaches Stage Ett will never fall beneath it.

 _Stage Tva_ is the designated stage for a mature weapon. At this stage the weapon develops a special ability comparable **at least** to that of a combat-useful Aristocrat's powers. This roughly corresponds to the canonical Bloody Rose during the battle against Rido. A hunter whose weapon has reached Stage Tva of development is considered seriously dangerous to a Pureblood in a straight fight.

 _Stage Tre_ is the designation stage for a mature weapon that has cultivated greater scope and mastery of its special ability. This roughly corresponds to the canonical Bloody Rose during late Vampire Knight, when it could be shaped into a huge wolf. At this point of development the notion of comparative strength with the hunter ceases to be considered; mutually assured destruction is possible for anyone, so they're simply to be avoided.

 _Stage Fyra_ is the designation stage for an idealized and complete bonded weapon.

 _General Note_ : It bears mentioning that a 'Pureblood Ancestor' like the canonical Kaname is simply not measured meaningfully here. With the exception of him and the Furnace Ancestor, there truly are no slumbering ancients to skew what seems normal. To be clear then, an unbound Rido would (probably) be the biggest individual apex predator around.

It may also be strange to consider something like a hunter being considered a probable 'M.A.D.' scenario. It's worth noting, then, that hunters near universally train to be warriors and most vampires just don't. So while a vampire might objectively win in terms of available power, there are very few vampires that know how to use their power as well as a hunter uses theirs.

**Can a human use a bonded weapon?**

Yes, but...

A bonded weapon is vampiric in nature but has no qi of its own. The Furnace Ancestor provides an engine, but the ignition and fuel still need to be provided by the person wielding it, and that comes in the form of qi. Only an extraordinarily healthy human has the qi necessary to use a bonded weapon, and even such a person will cause the weapon to revert to Stage Noll while in their possession. It also poses a risk of drawing away too much of the wielder's life during usage. The hunter's association doesn't equip a firing line of specially-trained humans because getting a person to the fitness required to use a bonded weapon is building somebody up to be an olympian and then burning them out by their 30s at latest. It's just a lot of time and effort for a limited use case.

In theory Ichiru should be **less** suited to using a bonded weapon than a very talented human, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Well, a part of it is that 'being biologically a hunter at all' still has perks. Even so, there seems to be something strange going on there...

**Can bonded weapons hurt humans?**

Yes, but...

It depends on the kind and the Stage that it occupies at the time. Let's take a look at some of the bonded weapons in From A Gentler Beginning:

Ichiru's sword (unnamed at the time that I write this!) could hurt a human unconditionally. No matter what else it is, it is still a piece of metal with a sharp edge.

Bloody Rose, as it is as of Chapter VIII, can only hurt a human with actual ammunition loaded into it. The bursts of energy that it can fling at vampires will pass through humans, because the weapon doesn't want to hurt humans. But it can't and won't stop Zero from just using a regular bullet if he had to. This is a disadvantage of a weapon that produces magic bolts if it doesn't have real ammo. On the other hand, if Bloody Rose were at Stage Tva its vines would be dangerous to humans. Tangentially, Zero owns ordinary backup guns as much for this reason as any other.

Weeping Larkspur, on the other hand... Well, I've only hinted at its special abilities so far, but I will say that it's a more temperamental weapon than most, and that oily sheen would be horribly poisonous to anybody it didn't want touching it.

Once we start looking at weapons of Stage Tva however, we're dealing with 'a sword that causes explosions' or 'manipulates the earth', or a gun that 'produces murderous vines'. Past a certain scale of expressed power, 'being unable to hurt regular people' just isn't in the cards anymore. This is mostly a matter of preference on my part; I think 'weapon cannot hurt normals' is too easy and while I'm not discarding it entirely, as a concept it definitely won't be honored by higher-scope hunter powers.

**On bonded weapons repelling vampires and others...**

Among vampires, only members of the Kuran family have consistently been able to use bonded weapons. The fact that this is base favoritism by the Furnace Ancestor is essentially unknown, but that's basically all it is.

Bonded weapons are capable of becoming temperamental and choosy, or playing favorites on their own. It is relatively common for bonded weapons to need to run in families simply because they refuse to cooperate with anyone else.

Much to the dismay of the Association, hunters turned into Level D vampires usually retain the ability to use their specific weapons (though most others will repel them as normal) as long as their personal agency isn't totally compromised. Since most Purebloods who would turn them are in fact seeking to rob them of free will though, this quirk has only resulted in disastrous encounters with vampirized super-hunters once or twice in recorded history.


	4. Hunter's Association: Overview

* * *

The Hunter's Association was informally founded ten thousand years ago by the Furnace Ancestor, a Pureblood who is believed to have detested her own kind. Despite being uniformly called the 'Hunter's Association' across such a vast span of time, the Association doesn't have a literal ten thousand year chain of unbroken tradition behind it. Total unity across such a vast span of time has been impossible even for the vampires, who have only recently been able to keep their organization coherent across a span of three thousand years.

There are only two points of commonality shared by all historical incarnations of the Hunter's Association:

Firstly, they are a power bloc standing in opposition to their vampire contemporaries. How much so and how aggressively varied by era.

Secondly, they have control of the Furnace Ancestor's forge.

This second point of commonality is strictly necessary in order to be recognized as the direct descendant of the original hunters, not only because of its historical import but also because it is absolutely vital to future generations of hunters. A splinter group that did not somehow have access to the forge would be unable to confer bonded weapons upon new members, effectively crippling their ability to fulfill the role of a vampire hunter.

The organizational structure of the Hunter's Association has varied with its leaders across the years, but one fundamental truth has always ruled it: It is only the strongest hunters who can seize control of the Association and be called 'leader'. Someone who, whether through making enough allies that can be absolutely counted on, or being personally powerful enough, could defeat practically the entire rest of the organization if forced into a fight with them. This unfortunate structure is a consequence of hunters having a similar predatory psychology to vampires, without that mindset serving the purpose of feeding them. Because of that, hunters are naturally aggressive people, especially when they're young.

Prior incarnations of the Association have been structured as everything ranging from businesses, militaries, feudal kingdoms, republics, true democracies, and more. The most common structure during post-founding antiquity was that of feudal kingdoms, with a complex system of royalty, nobility, and gentry. Remnants of this system still exist in the form of recognized 'celebrity' families, even though their greater authority -- such as it exists -- isn't official.

The current incarnation of the Hunter's Association is only around seven hundred years old, even though many of its records and secrets are as old as the creation of the Furnace itself. It is structured as something in-between a military junta and a political party, with President Masami Arata having served as the head of the Association for the last fifty years. His predecessor, Hildegard Kiryu, was the latest in a long line of 'vampires without fangs' produced by the Kiryu lineage and one of **very** few prominent hunters who died a natural death.

Hildegard's leadership was considered to be a period of radical "pro-vampire" sentiments. Although it was much more loose in every other regard, she established new treaties with the Council of Elders that made explicit previously play-it-by-ear expectations between the Association and the Council. In particular, she is responsible for helping concretely define what constitutes an unlawful killing between their two societies, and established the infamous "list" that the Association uses to designate vampires who are legal targets.

President Arata was given control of the Hunter's Association fifty years ago when Kaien Cross declined the opportunity to take command. The current organization of the Hunter's Association has since become radically militarized and both anti-vampire and anti-"vampire without fangs". Although such sentiments already existed as a consequence of jealousy and apprehension, the administration of President Kiryu stretched on so long and was so oppressive of the more aggressive blocs of hunters that dislike of "her kind" is a cultural marker of hunters with ordinary human lifespans.

As is seen in the lexicon of Snowy Mountains and Ocean Roses, the organizational structure of the modern Hunter's Association is as follows:

* * *

**Hunter’s Association Rank Structure**

President – Masami Arata

Vice President – Vacant

First Officer – Kaien Cross

Second Officer – Toga Yagari

Departmental Heads (Head of Assignment, Head of Armory, etc.)

Departmental Officers (Assignment Officers, Armory Officers, etc.)

Senior Associate

Associate

Junior Associate

* * *

The designation of Junior Associate is given to every hunter that is born. It denotes apprenticeship, and each Junior Associate is paired with a senior member of the Association for training.

Associates are those who have established themselves as capable of conducting solo operations without issue, and being responsible for their own actions. Essentially it is a formal lifting of their teacher's responsibility for them. The bulk of the Association is made up of regular Associates.

Senior Associates are either older hunters or hunters so talented that it's impossible to justify not giving them a certain amount of authority over the rank-and-file. Practically every Associate that makes it to age thirty is elevated to the rank of Senior Associate.

Departmental Officers are specialists with authority within their area of expertise or niche assignment, though they are otherwise the same as Senior Associates. In particular, Medical Officers have the official authority to strongarm medically unfit peers and superiors.

Departmental Heads compose the upper management of the Hunter's Association, overseeing entire specialties within the organization. Depending on how technical their expertise is, they might have de facto more authority even than the formal leadership of the Association.

The Head of Hemothaumaturgy in particular is so deeply connected to the establishment and maintenance of HQ's protective spells that it is universally understood that their position rivals the President's in terms of theoretical power. In practice, while the Head of Hemothaumaturgy might be able to gainsay the President, the loyalty required of the post is so complete that it would require a seriously derelict President or a seriously irresponsible promotion to the post for it to occur.

The First and Second Officers are the military commanders of the Association. When large-scale action occurs, it's their responsibility to see to its execution. They also handle various elements of training programs and educational standards for Junior Associates.

The President and Vice President are the final shot-callers of the Association, and generally understood to be the most powerful hunters.

In the current era, this is not the case. The previous Vice President, Kaien Cross, is widely understood to be the most dangerous individual hunter alive. He retains the post of First Officer because there are no hunters with more battle experience than him, and if it came down to it there's not a single hunter who wouldn't want Kaien Cross on their side if it came to a large scale war.

Toga Yagari conducted the everyday business usual to the post, but has seasonally delegated his duties to the Departmental Heads in order to assist Kaien with Cross Academy.

President Arata's leadership style at the Hunter's Association is a form of allegedly benevolent dictatorship in which disobedience can be punished by death. In practice, his vanity has turned him into a politician that has gradually come to be more like the vampires he despises than his peers. His power is cemented by loyalty from the ranks of hunters who think of First Officer Cross and his associates as barely better than vampires. Even though he's cemented his power socially, his bonded weapon _Megaera_ is a part of a set of three with a legendary reputation.

His obedience-or-death stance has rarely been tested in practice. Arata relies heavily on hotheaded younger hunters harassing dissenters until they either relent or come to negotiate with him. In this regard, Masami is famously skilled at getting what he wants not by being able to 'defeat' his enemies in personal combat, but simply being able to be a nuisance until somebody "pays" him to go away.

The re-foundation of Cross Academy as a place for reconciliation between the species has put President Arata in a serious bind. His own gradual move towards escalating anti-vampire sentiment hasn't gained enough traction that he can openly move against individuals and families like Cross, Yagari, Kiryu, and Kuran. But doing nothing is simply ceding victory to pro-vampire radicals.

The future of the Association has come to a crossroads, and no one is quite sure if they can steer it where they want it to go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're looking at this thinking, 'Wow, the Hunter's Association sure are a bunch of shonen battle idiots as a political group.', you're right.
> 
> The Hunter's Association has never been anything but dysfunctional.


	5. Setting: Language and Naming

This chapter is going to be a stub for the moment, because it involves something that I feel is extremely important to get out in the open right now but which is probably worth saying much more about in the future: Vampire Knight spans a period of time exceeding that of modern recorded history. The world that we, the readers and writers, live in and know has been gone for ten thousand years and probably more than that. To give some context to that, the word "friendly" in the English language as of AD 1020 was written like this: Freondiice.

As of this writing, that was (give or take, calendar changes are a thing) 1,000 years ago. The point is that languages drift over time, and they drift **hard**. A facet of my writing includes the presumption that the language being spoken by the characters is not any language we would actually recognize.

This also means that the naming schemes that I use when I need to come up with names for nameless characters are a little erratic. Why, for instance, Ylva Kiryu? The answer is that in my imagination, after the apocalypse, there was a lot of necessary blending of populations that resulted in the merging of what we would consider modern nationalities. Most of the characters would be considered Euro-Asian, with the exception of outliers like the Furnace Ancestor and the Kuran Ancestor who could definitively be called simply Japanese. Yet, we know quite certainly that some cultural conceits are rooted in modern day practices, and that mythological trivia of our time is still explicitly invoked. So a lot of bonded weapons are named after Greek deities, for instance.

Other examples include the hunter system of stages for defining bonded weapon advancement being swedish numbers, and in some unreleased content that I'll get around to later, Phoenician letters are used to identify the levels of vampire on the pyramid without repeatedly saying, 'Pureblood pureblood Aristocrat Level D' and so on.

This is probably my least interesting supplemental, but I do hope it helps people understand and appreciate where I'm coming from with certain angles of my writing.


	6. Setting: Berchtold

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you who may be looking at this and going, 'Heyyy... where's the next chapter of Hearth and Fang? Surely this isn't all you were doing!'
> 
> It's not. Chapter II is currently finished, but I may hold onto it until Chapter III for... reasons. We'll see. In the meantime, enjoy some world building.
> 
> Regarding this chapter of my Supplementals: I don't like how many locations of Vampire Knight are nameless and how much of the world is a blank slate. Town isn't just "town", people!

* * *

The town located down the mountain from Cross Academy is called Berchtold.

Berchtold was established ten thousand years ago by the Furnace and Kuran Ancestors. The population at the time was composed primarily of humans under the pair's protection, with a few scattered supporters of their own species lingering on the peripheries.

By the time that the Furnace Ancestor created the offshoot species known as hunters, Berchtold was a castle town with what is now the Hunter's Association Headquarters serving as its keep. Long before the memory of anyone left living and awake, the walls of Berchtold were pulled down in order to permit the town's growth and reconstruction as time passed and the amenities of lost eras were restored.

The current population of Berchtold is 106,137.

60,498 of those are supporters of the Hunter's Association, but the vast majority of them are not direct descendants of hunter lineages. While Berchtold's population of combat-ready hunters is the highest in the world, Berchtold is the place to which young hunters often return in order to have children in relative safety. There are many Junior Associates being apprenticed in Berchtold, so the combat power concentrated there is extremely variable.

The mountains surrounding Berchtold are host to the estates of numerous vampire families. The modern day Kuran estate (not to be mistaken for the place where Rido is bound) is located here, as is the estate of the Shoto family. Most of the families in this area are descendants of the former supporters of the Furnace and Kuran Ancestors, but many of them have since departed from the path that their own ancestors walked.

For a town so populated by hunters, Berchtold has a curiously high population of Level E vampires. Setting aside genuine lapses of restraint by younger vampires who aren't willing to die for what they don't even consider a crime, the opportunity to hurt hunters is irresistible to the especially malicious Pureblood clans.

Setting that aside, many of the feral vampires in Berchtold aren't local at all, but are instead present as a consequence of deliberate weaponization of Level E vampires. The more intelligent types with enough restraint to save their rampage for when it wouldn't mean certain immediate death have been clever enough to stow away aboard the regular trains, but most have instead been literally boxed up and shipped into town to cause problems.

While this would seem to make Berchtold more dangerous than elsewhere, the fact is that so many bonded weapons being in use makes rational vampires nervous. They're willing to drop disposable assets into the area to harass and destroy, but they would never make the mistake of overt operation unless they were confident enough in their chances of victory to seriously risk death. Areas with less hunter presence offer more opportunities for vampires to act directly, in the fullness of their power. It may be that the majority of hunters in Berchtold are rookies, but it only takes one lucky enough to get in a glancing hit and another to score a blow to the head or heart. Vampires with a chance at eternity just won't risk it.

The region of Berchtold was chosen by the Furnace Ancestor for its natural mountainous terrain and access to clean water, making it both difficult to invade and relatively easy to survive in. This was a greater concern at Berchtold's founding, when warlords and scavenger clans were much more common. But it has several other advantages: It is rich in gold and other mineral deposits, and is local to the site of pre-Apocalypse robotics manufacturing and pharmaceutical development. While much of the rest of the world suffered from unmitigated disease and the collapse of manufacturing, Berchtold was preserving elements of local modernity for future reconstruction.

The resulting town in the present day has an eclectic combination of technologies; it is, for instance, not at all unusual for people to favor gas lamps and heating systems to electric equivalents but both are available. The relatively intact ruins in the surroundings are also a favorite of scavengers, though the millennia have certainly stripped away most of the good stuff that was near the surface already.

Berchtold's primary exports are gold, industrial machinery, medicine, and watches. Its primary import is fresh produce. Tourists come from out of town to stay at lakeside cabins or ski resorts, and occasionally to gawk at the historical buildings. The most common reason for somebody unaffiliated with the Hunter's Association to move to Berchtold is for easier access to advanced medical care, with access to pre-Apocalyptic artifacts and historical information being a distant second.

Because it is protected by mountains, Berchtold was originally reluctant to connect to the underground train network that links the continent together. When they eventually gave in and built their stretch of tunnels, it was with the provision that they would be able to seal their route if need be. To this day, the train tunnel beneath Berchtold is host to several garrisons running adjacent to the tracks whose sole purpose is to collapse the tunnels in the event of invasion.


	7. Hunters and Vampires: Basics

* * *

The secret birth of the Pureblooded Vampires took place shortly before the "Fall", though the mythology of the pre-Fall world supports the notion that a small number of such beings may have appeared throughout history. Every last one of them was born to parents that were, as far as anyone knew, human in every way. Only the first generation of Purebloods knew this fact, and none remain who are in any condition to tell somebody about them. If any of the second or third generation knew their human parents or grandparents, they never passed that information on or recorded it prior to their deaths. It is more than likely the case that those few vampire princes and princesses who knew this information occluded it on purpose to legitimize the self-proclaimed divinity that most of them claimed during that era.

Needless to say, during antiquity, the modern pyramid of vampire society didn't exist. Pureblooded vampires existed entirely alongside formerly human vampires they transformed to be their vassals. The most peaceful Purebloods of antiquity usually just transformed their lovers or friends who desired longevity, but they were not the majority. The decision of the Furnace Ancestor and Kuran Ancestors to oppose their own kind was rooted in a return to feudalism spurred on by power-hungry Purebloods. They were joined by the Shoto family, and a number of bloodlines that have either gone extinct or only left behind Aristocratic descendants.

When the Furnace Ancestor was ready to be subsumed into weapons for mankind, she first distributed her blood among her strongest human followers to empower them. Her name for them was not 'vampire hunters', but Dhampir, rooted in folklore surrounding the offspring of vampires. This name would become stigmatized over the years as the descendants of the Furnace Ancestor's champions became far removed from the people who knew her personally, and ceased to regard her as anything but a source of weapons, finally culminating in calling themselves hunters and viewing themselves as strictly human.

  


Level A Vampires are referred to variably as "the Aleph strain", Purebloods, Kings and Queens for adults, Princes and Princesses for younger, "Master Vampires", etc. They are immortal, mutable in form, and possess an expanded consciousness that can be parted out into sub-bodies of varying complexity.

The physical bodies of Alephs are most vulnerable when they are children, prior to their fangs coming in. All vampires except Level D experience this phase, in which they are unable to process blood and instead siphon qi off of others with passing physical contact. Unlike vampires of lower castes however, Purebloods must suffer their childhood and early adolescence with a fixed physical body. During these vulnerable early years, even a Pureblood can be killed in a manner similar to lesser vampires.

Once their fangs come in, Purebloods become dislodged from the need for a fixed physical body and enter a state of near-unconditional immortality. They gain the ability to alter their appearance, though few practice this ability more than is necessary to alter their appearance within the parameters of their existing body; for example, giving themselves a specific hairstyle or regrowing lost hair. This milestone is also when Purebloods obtain the ability to produce familiars.

Most Pureblood lineages have a unique ability of some kind. The Kuran family is known for psychokinesis; the Shirabuki, for the ability to generate heat. Many such unique abilities were lost or transferred to other bloodlines who successfully consumed a Pureblood during the post-Fall feudal era.

  


Level B Vampires are referred to as "Strain Bet", Aristocrats, Nobility, etc. Their physiology is similar to that of a Pureblood, diverging in that they don't disengage from their bodies when their fangs come in and they have a natural lifespan of 1000 to 2000 years. One major element they share with Purebloods is an expanded consciousness, which is what gives rise to the unique abilities of their bloodlines.

The special abilities of Aristocrats are always "psychic" in nature, but never as pure and straightforward as the psychokinetics of the Kuran. They generate elemental forces, manipulate a specific kind of matter, tamper with people's mind or senses, or otherwise act upon something that is 'already there'. A particularly common special ability is the power to command or even possess animals, which scholars of vampiric physiology believe reflect the sorts of familiars the vampire(s) in question would have were they not so physically limited.

Although generally thought of as the 'strongest' vampires beside Purebloods, this is not strictly accurate. Propaganda over the years has popularized this notion, but the truth is that Level B Vampires aren't as physically robust as Level D Vampires. This is a side-effect of being effectively an 'imperfect Pureblood'; their physiology is rooted in the foundation that they can just make a new body (even though they can't), leading to generally healthy but not effortlessly physically monstrous physiques. Accordingly, the development of their qi channels emphasizes psychic output.

  


Level C Vampires are referred to as "Strain Samek", but have no informal designations beyond being common vampires. They have a natural lifespan reaching to around 750 years. As a result of Aristocratic propaganda they are considered socially and physically to be more robust than ex-human vampires, but as is the case with Aristocrats, this is not actually true.

The physique of Level C Vampires is more physically developed because their growth process is sufficiently removed from that of a Pureblood that their physical health isn't completely under-emphasized. Their actual traits are less consistent than the other castes of vampires, and mold better to what the Level C chooses to do with themselves more than either Level B or Level D vampires.

  


Level D (and E) Vampires are referred to as "Strain Zayin", ex-humans, or occasionally just slaves. In the past they've also been called knights, vassals, chevaliers, boyars, janissaries, chamberlains, champions, and consorts. The condition of being a formerly human vampire isn't well-understood by modern vampire society because the pyramid that the vampires use to define their stations in society are at least three-quarters propaganda designed to prop up the Aristocrats. Their actual lifespan is not well-understood. Official estimates are 500 years, but that's probably not accurate and definitely isn't tested.

Contrary to appearances and common conception, Level D are a companion species and not a diminished offshoot. Upon being bitten their body is rebuilt at the cellular level, bringing it closer to that of their Pureblood progenitor. This change is excruciating because of how comprehensive it is, and results in a more robust physique than that of Level B or C Vampires. It isn't totally complete until the Pureblood that bit the Level D feeds them their blood.

This exchange isn't as cursory as it appears to be; the Level A isn't merely transferring blood, but fragmenting a large piece of their consciousness off as if they were making a particularly powerful familiar. The purpose of this transfer is to artificially expand the consciousness of the recipient, which is a necessary component of vampiric meta-physiology. The insertion of the Pureblood's consciousness into their Level D is part of what makes it nearly impossible for a Level D to hurt their creator; quite literally, their instincts parse it as an act of self-destruction.

  


In addition to all of these caste-specific traits, all vampires have a minimum of psychic ability. They can daze others by looking them in the eyes, modify memories, read the thoughts of those whose blood they are drinking, and engage in Hemothaumaturgy / Blood Magic. Although most common among the Aristocrats, strange or unique abilities do occur among all vampires.

Level B Vampires rarely (effectively never) express unique physical abilities, and Level D Vampires rarely (effectively never) express unique psychic abilities.

Lastly, vampires are almost universally exceptionally attractive. Even when they aren't, their scent and taste -- which humans use to judge potential mates much more than they are consciously aware of -- are adaptive to the preferences of humans near them. This is not a conscious ability, and doesn't utterly override a human's mind; all the same, it _is_ a predatory adaptation.

  


Hunters are generally regarded simply as humans, both by themselves and their vampire opponents. They were originally called Dhampir, a term that fell out of favor after the last hunters that personally knew the Furnace Ancestor died out, but that term is much more accurate to what they really are.

The physiology of a hunter is about half of the way to a Level D vampire. Rather than the ability to process blood, they have a juvenile vampire's ability to interact directly with qi. While they can hypothetically leech life force off of others, they can't usually take qi in quickly enough for it to be combat-useful. Most of this trait is instead used to power bonded weapons, or temporary feats of superhuman ability.

A typical hunter is superhumanly strong, has a subtle accelerated healing factor that nevertheless cannot restore anything the human body can't naturally, and can usually (but not always) move too quickly for an individual human using a gun to be a meaningful threat to them. They also have a strong sixth sense for the qi of others, derived from having physiology similar to a juvenile vampire. This sense exists in vampires but usually atrophies by puberty, when their fangs come in and they drink blood instead of absorbing life force through skin contact.

First-generation hunters had a lifespan of around 250 years, but they could make it to 300 at the outside edge. Interbreeding with unmodified humans diluted their power over time, resulting in a minority population of long-lived hunters (referred to as vampires without fangs, dhampir, or more neutrally throwbacks) and a larger population of hunters with a normal human lifespan and diminished physical abilities. This division has, needless to say, caused tensions.

In the present day throwbacks are the product of a hunter pregnancy resulting in twins. One of the twins inevitably devours the life of the other instinctually, making themselves substantially more powerful than the typical modern hunter once they've matured.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't have a lot to add to this one. It's been put together in bits and pieces over time, and I didn't scribble down my thoughts at the time-of. (You can tell some of it is pretty old because prior entries have passingly mentioned things like phoenician alphabet usage for referring to types of vampire, but I'm only just getting around to posting this.)
> 
> Regarding Level C Vampires: They're kind of boring, I know. But that's sort of the point. They're not weird deliberately created servants, they're not the immediate descendants of gods or demigods. They're "NPC Vampires" that fill out the crowd, and I don't recall if we ever even saw one in Hino Matsuri's Vampire Knight. Certainly, I think none of the named characters were one.
> 
> I'm pinning a lot on the Aristocrats with some of the propagandizing. But, well... they're usually government official, industry leader 1%ers. As we saw with Takuma, you have to try pretty hard to not be a scheming bastard in those circles.


	8. Level A and D: The Origin of Vampirism

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This supplemental was originally a part of the previous supplemental. I decided to add it separately because it felt a bit out of place wedged there in the amount of detail I put into it. (Not that much, IMO, but still enough that I had this thought.)

* * *

Ex-human vampires are ignored as much as possible by the upper crust of vampire society, and have one of the most complex histories of all the vampire castes. Of all the castes of vampires, Level D are the only caste that is proactively and deliberately drawn into the fold from outside. All other vampires are a consequence of ordinary breeding; as such, a level D is (in contemporary times at least) usually someone that a Pureblood has decided they cannot do without. The entire first generation of Level B vampires were directly descended from couplings of Level A and D vampires. Prior to this there was no such thing as vampire aristocracy; indeed, the idea of Level D vampires somehow being "less legitimate" members of the species would have been considered ridiculous because they are key origin points of the species.

In spite of that, the reason for the creation of Level D vampires was a great deal of what defined early conflicts between vampires, and eventually sparked the creation of vampire hunters.

  


The Pureblood warlords who attempted to seize control of the world by transforming large swaths of the population to become their vassals defined one side of that conflict. Such "mass turnings" were exhausting to sustain, because while the newly-turned vampires could go feed on each other once stabilized, their initial feedings had to be provided by the Pureblood who created them. Absolute control over large populations was worth the effort for many, though there were initial issues with inexperienced warlords accidentally producing ferals because the creation process wasn't well-understood. Later, a desire for shock troops during the resulting wars would see the deliberate mass-production of level E vampires.

This category of mass-transformation hasn't been done since the conclusion of the post-Fall war over six thousand years ago. Most of the warlords who employed this method were eventually killed by the Furnace Ancestor's first generation of hunters, aided by the Kuran Ancestor and allies. Needless to say, mass transformations had little by way of emotional implications.

  


The Furnace Ancestor's supporters called themselves humanists. They were defined by fondly remembering their human origins and a desire for more-or-less peaceful coexistence. While even they had their extremists who believed themselves to be higher life forms, all of them agreed that the warlords had to go. The most prominent of the humanists after the Furnace Ancestor herself was the Kuran Ancestor, who would go on to lead them until the conclusion of the war. It was their romantic habits surrounding the creation of Level D vampires that survived, and are reflected to the distaste of the Aristocrats to the present day.

The humanists rarely created vampires by means of biting humans. Most of them who did so limited themselves either to their former human families, lovers, close friends, or very occasionally to those humans they owed a serious debt. The archetypical ex-human vampire of this era was not a "subject", but rather the "person their creator cherished and trusted the most". The romantic connotations of such an idea have endured well into modern nights.

Some time after the Neo-Feudal period, the Aristocracy as it exists in its current form was firmly established and sufficiently removed from its ex-human origins that it no longer meaningfully empathized with Level D Vampires. It was at this time that the "pyramid" used to illustrate vampire castes was first drafted, and the nobility began to push against Purebloods being intimately involved with ex-humans. This effort didn't initially phase the Purebloods themselves who were generally bull-headedly doing whatever they wanted, but did trickle down into common vampires. Slowly, it became unsafe for ex-human vampires to become involved with Purebloods, because -- completely decentralized -- radicalized common vampires would lash out against them violently. This would inevitably result in the death of the commoner, but these assassinations were rarely conducted by somebody unwilling to stand for the principles of "defending the honor of the (Prince/Princess)", even if wholly unasked.

The Aristocracy followed up this trend by pushing arranged marriages between Purebloods, or more regularly between Purebloods and other Aristocrats. The historical results of this pressure have held until very recently, but largely proven themselves to be negative. This has particularly proven true between arranged Pureblood-Pureblood relationships, where the differences in age are often so drastic that no reasonable understanding is possible between the elder and younger vampire. Even among those of closer age, they are so few in number that the likelihood of any two of them being completely compatible is relatively low.

One major result of this is that the adult Purebloods who were to a greater or lesser degree beholden to the expectations of the Aristocracy on the Council of Elders when they were younger have _not_ reinforced these expectations on the latest generation of Purebloods. The Shoto family shocked and scandalized their society when they revealed that their only child had chosen to live a human life (though it was not understood how literally this was meant), and the main branch of the Hio clan became so secretive after what happened with Shizuka that it is strongly suspected they've since had children they simply never told the world about.

Lastly and most recently, Juri Kuran received offers of marriage alliances while pregnant with her two children with a certain annoyance. The Ichijo and Aido families both made offers and were declined politely. The third and final family to attempt to secure such an alliance were the Achthoven, coastal Aristocrats who thought to tempt the Kuran with influence over global shipping lanes.

Juri, who had by then run out of patience, infamously appeared at a major convention of the Council of Elders and made clear that her children's futures would be guided by their own desires. To drive the point home, she laid a geas on the attending member of the Achthoven family that prevented them from interacting with the Kuran in any way without a Kuran-friendly intermediary for the next century.

The Aristocrats would retaliate in secret by providing information about Juri's whereabouts during her pregnancy to the Hunter's Association, which would ultimately backfire when Kaien Cross was defeated and befriended by Juri.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Juri's behavior here sounds familiar, doesn't it? Well, Yuuki wasn't as forceful in Matsuri's vampire knight; she stopped shy of actually using her power to command, but she made it clear she wasn't to be messed with. 
> 
> I interpret Juri as a little more like an ordinary Pureblood, in that she is pretty willing to wield her power once she actually reaches her threshold.
> 
> I originally thought that last part felt a bit out of place in this specific supplemental, but ultimately it's important to the changing winds of how not just Level D are treated, but vampirism in general.
> 
> If Juri was alive in the Furnace Ancestor's era, she definitely would've been a humanist. Similar sentiments are coming back into play.


End file.
